The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department revised its policy requiring firefighters to participate in local parades last Thursday. It will no longer mandate participation, a move that follows complaints by four firefighters who say parade attendees harassed them during last month’s Pride parade.

The Department of Fair Employment and Housing issued “right to sue” notices to each of the four firefighters on Monday and attorneys for the firefighters are currently working to prepare the lawsuit.

“In no shape or form will anybody in the fire department, civilian or uniformed, be ordered, mandated or otherwise coerced to participate in a parade they don’t want to. It is not going to happen,” said the department’s spokesperson Maurice Luque.

Four firefighters, Chad Allison, John Ghiotto, Jason Hewitt and Alex Kane, filed complaints with state authorities Aug. 1 seeking the right to press sexual-harassment claims against the city’s fire department. The men said parade attendees taunted them with sexually explicit comments while they drove a fire engine through Hillcrest in Pride on July 21.

The firefighters, all members of Station 5 located in the heart of Hillcrest, claim their battalion chief ordered them to ride in the parade, and that they followed the order out of concern they would be suspended or punished.

Under the new policy released last week, and agreed upon between Fire Chief Tracy Jarman and the local firefighters’ union, firefighters will be asked to volunteer to participate in parades and be paid four hours overtime for doing so.

However, Charles Limandri, of the Thomas More Law Center, a nonprofit Christian legal organization that is representing the firefighters, told The Associated Press the wording of the new policy does not go far enough. “By not explicitly stating that no one will be ordered to participate and that participation will be done strictly on a volunteer basis, it leaves the door open for personnel to be ordered to participate,” said Teresa Mendoza, associate attorney with Limandri’s office, adding that the “right to sue” notices they received Monday “are not a reflection of the merit, one way or another, of the claims. It simply gives them the right to follow through with the suit.”

“The policy wasn’t written only to leave a loophole to leave the problem as a possibility in the future. We wrote the policy to solve the problem and were as direct as we felt we needed to be,” Luque said, explaining the city is “looking at the concerns brought up by the attorney.”

“I don’t know if we will change the policy to be more specific. But I do know we want to be done with this and resolve it. LiMandri, the fire department and the city all want the same thing and that is for this to be resolved.”

Local news reports have said that the firefighters have been the subject of harassment from other firefighters since coming forward.

“The harassment that they have been targets of has been more in the nature of teasing and rousing that goes on between coworkers, Mendoza said, noting that the firefighters will not file harassment charges against their co-workers. “By and large other firefighters have been very supportive of their efforts to get the policy changed.”

Luque said that to his knowledge there have been no complaints concerning harassment or retaliation. “I don’t doubt that there have been some firefighters who have responded in such a manner, but no formal complaints have been communicated from the crew to senior management about such complaints,” he said.

He said the department is working with the City Attorney’s office on the case with regard to the allegations and investigating the situations surrounding the case.

Mendoza expects to have the case filed in court within the next couple weeks.